“Maya Angelou always says, “When you learn, teach. When you get, give.” That, my friends is what gives your story purpose & meaning.” – Oprah Winfrey

When I unretired, I mentioned that I had to give up a dream.  I didn’t just go back to hockey, I went back to the Meditation Center.  Going back has been difficult on both fronts.  Why?  Because I had to give up a dream to do it.

By going back to hockey it meant that I was giving up on the dream of having a family of my own.  It was done.  No more dreaming.  It was no longer going to be my dream.

Going back to the Meditation Center meant I was preparing to make my paths in life into a singular path.  It meant that I would be spending the next 5 years as an apprentice to become a sister.  In other words…a nun.

The hardest part isn’t the “I didn’t find anyone.”  It was the part where I felt like God broke my heart because I came to the realization that he was putting up walls in my life to say that the dream I’ve had my entire life of having a child is not going to happen.  My ovaries ache in pain every single time I remind myself of that specific fact.  There will be no baby.  That’s what breaks my heart more than anything and brings tears to my eyes every time I say it to myself.

That is what has happened.  That is the dream that is not going to happen in this lifetime.  It’s the dream I had to let go of.

I officially passed the 3 months of cleansing and have moved into the 5 year apprenticeship of preparing to become a sister.  The apprenticeship began this month.  If there was any remote chance that I would step away, another one of the women in my class made me realize that if I still wanted the dream the harsh reality was that it will never come.

Being told that someone likes you but because you do not fit into the dynamic of the person they are expected to be with, plan on it never happening.  What was she talking about?  My body.  This world is filled with shallowness.  People put too much emphasis on the body and how you look as being more important than the soul.  People that think that way are not the type of people I would ever be interested in romantically.

I know what it feels like to be passed over for a younger, prettier, skinnier girl.  You could have his heart.  He could be totally in love with you, but he never breaks tradition in what is expected of him.  He is expected to be with a certain type of woman.  If you fall outside of that, he will never choose you.  It took a fashion editor twice my age to really help me to understand that.  Why?  Because she was once like me and it happened to her many times.  She’s now in her 60s.  She never married.  Never had kids.  But even now she hopes that she can at least have a partner who will overlook what she looks like on the outside and love her for her soul.

That could either be me in 30 years or I could choose not to have that hope.  I know the pain of waiting for a dream to happen for the past 20 years.  Would I be okay waiting for that dream to happen 30 years from now?  40 years? 50 years?  How long can someone truly believe in a false hope?

It’s like “Love in the Time of Cholera,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  It is a hope that the person you have loved your entire life will someday choose you.  Florentino fell in love.  He watched his Fermina reject him because he was ugly and not of the right status.  He watched her marry a doctor, and spend her entire life with that other man.  When her husband died years later, Florentino and Fermina were both old.  He had to woo her heart and her soul before she would finally look at him as not an ugly man, but as a man who would love her the way she had always wanted to be loved.

He was said to be ugly and sad, “but he is all love.”  For Fermina, love wasn’t good enough.  It was about social status, money, and beauty.  Her marriage was not based on love.  It was all based on the temporary things that make up life.  Status and fame…temporary.  Money is always liquid.  Outward beauty can change in an instant or change over time.  It is never guaranteed to last.

Love can be said to be temporary, liquid and can change instantly or over time.  It is not guaranteed to last…unless two souls fall in love.

In these last five years I’ve learned that when two souls fall in love, no matter where your soul is…in heaven or back on earth…they will always find each other.  That love doesn’t diminish or disappear from one lifetime to the next.  It always remains.  It is a fire that can never be put out.

Marriages these days don’t last because people look for meaning in the external.  I’ve watched the “grow to love each other” marriages too.  In this day and age, those marriages lead to divorce.  Love has become something cheap and temporary, the same way consumerism runs rampant in industrialized nations.  Love…I’m talking the real stuff where two souls come together and were meant for each other…that love is the rarest of forms.

That story is the love story I was holding out for.  I didn’t want to marry someone because my family needed heirs to continue the blood line.  I didn’t want to marry someone so I wouldn’t be alone.  I was holding out for THAT dream.  Why?  Because I knew in my heart it existed.

I also know how this hell works.  That kind of love…no longer exists in this lifetime.  It’s understanding this that helped me to piece together the Love Story.  This is a reflection of humanity.  You start from a place called Heaven.  As we go from one age to the next, we become impure.  In the descent from Heaven to Hell…Heaven is love at its purest form…Hell is knowing that love exists and then realizing that you are not meant to have it.  You are meant to stand there and watch that soul you have loved since the dawn of time not choose you.  You’re meant to watch it happen over and over and over again with everyone you encounter.  They love you, but they can’t be seen with you.  You’re not perfect on the outside.  You’re too much of a liberal thinker.  You’ve rejected people’s beliefs.  The list can go on and on.  Basically…you are not fit for society’s standards.

Yet, since when is society 100% right about everything?  Preachers stand before their congregation, but don’t admit to having an affair with 3-4 different women in their church.  Priests have defiled little boys, yet they still lead the proceedings in their church every week, unscathed by the Vatican.  People want guns on school campuses, even though the only people stupid enough to bring guns on campus are the ones that want to kill everyone.  One society wants to protect a person’s right to carry an AR15, the same gun that slaughtered an entire class of little children.  Hunters won’t even use it to hunt.  The gun was only designed to kill a lot of people as quickly as possible. Yet, people want to protect the right to carry this kind of weaponry around.

Truthfully, society is backwards.  They don’t know what they want enough to be a collective voice.  We live on laws that could see a mass murderer that killed a whole slew of people in Aurora, Colorado get off due to technicalities or a “not guilty by reason of insanity” plea.  The way the laws work in this country, he’s more likely to be found not guilty under the insanity plea than any other plea available to him.  Yet, we all know he’s not insane.  This is what extremely brilliant killers do.  He will use the system to his advantage…and at what cost?  He will prove to the world that he can murder multitudes of people and get away with it.

This is the world we live in.  We have fallen so far away from grace that if you haven’t noticed, we, as humanity, have made this world HELL.  We all live in it.  We all witness Hell in all its glory every single day.  Hell is different for each and every person.  We have all been born into this lifetime to pay for our sins, whatever it may be…to finish out the drama and make our souls clean again.

Religion in Hell?  What would that be?  Religion in Hell is blind faith.  It’s being so far away from the light of God that you’ll believe whatever it is someone tells you to believe because you have faith that God wouldn’t allow this to happen to you if He was real.  Actually, yeah, He would.  It is your choice to believe in a lie or not.  Free will.  You can either choose to seek Him and His truth or die believing in the lies.

Religion has become so watered down and so far from the real truth of what it was in the beginning that it has become completely unrecognizable.  The truth is like the telephone line.  The truth is pure at the beginning, but as it goes from one age to the next by the time it gets to you the phrase “The Red Fire Truck is at the station” turns into “A Monkey is purple and eating a banana.”  That is today’s religion.  ALL OF THEM.

This is what Hell is.

It is different for everyone.  For me, my punishment was a lifetime of solitude.  BUT it is my choice to look at the punishment as a punishment or a reward.  As time moves on and I watch the people around me, I prefer the solitude.

It took me a long time to be okay with this.  I had to learn to let go.  I had to detach from my dream that I knew was not going to come true.  God can’t bring up the subject of the baby with me anymore.  He’s already broken my heart.  He can’t discuss it with me anymore.  It’s a dead subject matter.

Detaching myself from the need to have a family of my own…that was difficult, but it was a breakthrough.  In case I didn’t realize I had a breakthrough in detaching from that desire, I got an email with my horoscope saying that I had made a breakthrough a few hours later.  It told me I was on the right path…a singular path that no longer had a “Choose Your Own Adventure” path.  There were no more, “If you want this kind of life, turn here” signs.  It was just one long, straight and narrow road leading to one place…the next lifetime.

I am usually awake somewhere between 2AM and 5AM meditating.  In the mornings, I spend time in study.  I attend classes two times a week.  The days I’m not in class, I read the murli points.

This lifetime isn’t meant to be selfish with my own desires, needs and wants.  It was meant to clear up that balance sheet between the good and the bad.  Everything I carry in this soul, I need to spend this lifetime scrubbing it clean.  It’s meant to issue in a new age and to make this lifetime the most amazing lifetime of all.  All of this is what the singular path means.  It’s about establishing the New Heaven in this very moment in everything I do.

Detaching myself from my lifetime dream was the breakthrough I needed.  That’s why I decided to become not only a student of raj yoga, but also a sister.  I began my apprenticeship this month.  I begin the vegetarian (I may start pescatarian at first) lifestyle beginning on July 1.

If you don’t know what raj yoga is, please Google it.  If you want to understand my lifestyle…I am one of the strict yogis when it comes to lifestyle.  So if you stumble on the word celibacy, yes…that is me.  My covenant with God was made 13 years ago.  It hasn’t changed.  These last 13 years of not breaking that covenant made me realize I should just go ahead and become a sister.  I spent the last five years trying to see if a different path was available to me only to see it never was.  There was only one singular path…it was just admitting that was the only path I was supposed to take.

You see, I am resolved in knowing that the way things are in this lifetime doesn’t have to repeat itself again in the next lifetime.  This time period is in fact the hell period.  Things are supposed to be this bad.  I can choose to be part of the drama or I can choose to step away from it and focus on preparing for the next lifetime by not only purifying this soul, but by creating that new heaven on earth while I still remain.

I understand that this lifetime, I have to make it the best lived of all of them.  This is the lifetime a woman can become anything she dreams of being.  Not too long ago, women were forbidden from writing or even reading.  We didn’t even have the right to vote!  Our only mission was to find a husband as soon as possible and have children.  We were never really supposed to amount to anything of importance.  These days, we can.

There are still parts of this world where women are forbidden from reading and writing.  I’ve been to places where I was told, “Do not speak to the women because we don’t want you to encourage them or give them ideas.”  They didn’t want their women to think they could forego marriage and children and become their own successful breadwinner.

Coming into this lifetime, I knew what my mission was.  It just took being 100% honest with myself about my path in life that I could make that mission a reality.

So if there was someone out there that thought to wait for the opportune moment…you waited too long.  Your window of opportunity closed.  It will not reopen in this lifetime.  The only thing that was proven to me is that time is of the essence.  If you wait too long, the one thing you are truly searching for will get tired of waiting, thinking they completely wasted their entire time waiting on you…and then someone will come along and make them realize…you were never good enough, because you were a coward.

Decisions are made.  New paths are laid out…but then again, maybe this was supposed to happen exactly this way anyway.  You’ll always be thinking…what would have happened if you had chosen me the first time around instead of someone else.  You’re shallow.  Really, you are…because it never works out when you chase after the things that are not real.  Ask yourself what love really is.  Is it spending years with someone who is using you because of your status in order to gain their own footing in the world?  Or someone who spoke to you in a different way…with honesty, sincerity and love in their heart and soul?

Oh, to live in hell looking at all of the facsimiles of the real thing…never knowing what the pure essence of love really is.  You choose McDonalds over the greatest meal you will ever have in life.  That is what so many people do: calling the cheap crap the real thing, when the real thing will always cost you everything and nothing at the same time.  All you know is that the latter is worth every single ounce of your being…but you still choose McDonalds.

Looks good on the outside.  Tastes good when you first put it in your mouth. All the while, you know it’s crap for you on the inside.

Welcome to Hell.

I just choose to work on getting the hell out of here in order to not get thrown back into hell all over again.  My soul is worth more to me on this path in life than the luxuries Hell is trying to offer up.  Maybe I’ll be born into the New Heaven.  Only way to get the golden ticket is to leave no room for uncleanliness in your soul.

So with that said…guys, stop telling me that someone will come along.  Not in this shallow world will someone convince me they are right for me.  The window of opportunity for that dream closed the second I returned to hockey and the Meditation Center.  It will never open again.  I have more important matters on my mind.  God failed to deliver something to me, and very likely he did it on purpose.  The singular path includes no one but my very own soul.  That is what I learned in these last five years.  I need no one…and that is the reward, not the punishment now that I can truly see what people choose.  They’d rather have McDonalds than the real thing because it’s easier, cheaper and faster.  Requires little to no effort on your part…even though it will always remain crap (and not good for you) on the inside.  It will never truly nurture you.

Free will, people.  Free will.

The group I select to leak the premise of the book to are strangers.  They’re not friends or family.  We may be sitting in a room together on the same mission or the same vacation, but we don’t know each other.  They can objectively tell me whether it’s the dumbest story they’ve ever heard or they can get so caught up in the tale that their response leaves them breathtaken.

It’s the latter part I’m looking for.  I don’t want a friend or family member telling me what they think.  They’re not my audience.  My audience are complete strangers to me, yet we’re all on that same journey in life.

When I was in Morocco, I came across a group of tourists from the UK and America treking across the Sahara.  We were all staying in the same hotel a few hours from Dades Gorges.  I was sitting by myself at a huge table to do some work over breakfast.  They all sat down next to me, even though there were plenty of tables elsewhere.

I listened to them talk before realizing one of the men in their group was sick.  That’s when I spoke up and they discovered I was an American.  I made him some special tea that I bought in the last town Driss and I had stopped in.  I had been sick throughout the entire journey because of all of the second hand cigarette smoke I breathed in while I was in Paris.  Driss had made sure I got the appropriate Berber medicine I needed to help my ailing lungs.

While the sick British man drank the tea and ate some yogurt, the tourist group was interested in how a young woman was making the trek across Morocco by herself with a guard in tow.

It ends up they were making all of the same stops as me, but my experience was very different from theirs.  My journey was much more personal.  I wasn’t just sightseeing.  I was breaking bread with the Moroccan men and learning all about them, their stories, and their lives…just like a writer would do.

I relayed to them the story of my night in the Saharan Desert alone with a Berber nomad.  The look on all of their faces…that’s what told me I had to write this story.

When I had finished telling them of how I was running through the desert hand in hand with a Berber nomad with the moon above us lighting our way, I saw one of the older gentlemen sigh at how beautiful the imagery was…it was right then that I knew I had to write the tale.  It’s expected that the women at the table would be sighing over finding love in the most remotest places in the world, but not so expected when a retired old British man sighs with stars in his eyes.

That’s how I knew I had a bestseller on my hands.

It remains in a notebook right now because I’ve had more pressing stories to write, hockey to cover, blogs to update, etc.  For those hockey players and hockey media that know me…they know I’ll hold onto a story and then release it at a later date.  In other words, I publish when it’s the right moment.

The story begins there in that trek across Morocco.  The rest of it is yet to be experienced.  The story is not complete yet.  That’s one of the many reasons why I am heading back to Morocco.  This time, I’ll be writing as we travel from one end of the country to the other and back up again.

As for the book I’m working on now, I let slip the topic of my story and research to the class last night.  I expected the women to always become intrigued when you’re talking about a love story, but the one man that was in our group, he leaned in with the other ladies as they listened to the tale of pure love, pure marriage and how as we take rebirth it becomes tainted and corrupt until it becomes completely non-existent as we fall from our original grace of heaven.

I pitched the story to all of them and it was the man that was in our group that made me realize…this is a story that needs to be told because it touches his very own soul in its own way.  The way the story of fate is being woven and how I’ve had these synchronistic moments over the past few months…this is what intrigued them, especially when I explained what has been churning inside of my mind.  This is the stuff God and I are talking about in meditations.  He’s helping me to piece the entire story together from the first love story to the non-existent love story.

My time at the Meditation Center is helping me to understand these last 5 years, what happened, as well as how this story relates to the grand scheme of things.

We talked about Aha! moments and moments of clarity in class.  For me, explaining what I’ve been thinking about for the last month…I think that blew so many people’s minds.  It’s not just a clear cut “In the beginning…” story all the way up until now.  It’s one of those stories where you see how something so pure can become tainted as time moves forward.  It weaves in stories of fate and how fate lines become constructed.  How the moment of heaven, where everything is pure can turn into hell as the cycle moves forward.  Love has its seasons.  Even love can become as cold as winter.

The most important aspect of this story is learning how to evolve from that Hell at the end of the cycle to find Heaven again.

I think this surprised everyone in my class that this is what is churning in my mind right now.  I even mentioned that in the Monday class, someone mentioned a piece I had written to explain “A New Heaven.”  Since our teacher had not read it, I explained I had written this piece last year and it was about finding heaven now within ourselves.  We have to live each moment as if we are in heaven already…which means we have to make our soul absolutely pure as if we were already in heaven.  No tainted souls are allowed in heaven.  That means you need to start living now as if you are already in heaven.  Your mind, your thoughts, your actions all have to be those works of angels and children of God.  If you dip into the vices, you are not practicing God’s ways.  Ergo, there is no place in Heaven for those people.

Many believe that if you believe a certain way or in a certain deity, prophet or god, you’re saved from hell.  That’s not true, because we are all in hell right now.  Our only concern should be how to get back to Heaven.  You are not saved by believing.  You save yourself by being.  No one wants a sad person in heaven.  No one wants a heartbroken and weary soul in heaven.  No one wants an unforgiving tyrant in heaven.

Everyone needs to be on the same page.  You have to work towards having a pure, untainted soul if you want to enter into the gardens of heaven.  It’s not about believing…it’s about being.

Sins aren’t the only things that keep you out.  Hating yourself all of the time…being unable to forgive yourself…being heartbroken over something you lost or never gained…having a negative karmic balance…these are all things that will keep you from even approaching heaven’s doors.  Not everyone makes it in.  There are very few who gain access.

Even the wisest, soul-conscious beings could remain outside of heaven’s doors because their heart was heavy with their own burdens that life afforded to them.  Life is about scrubbing that soul clean and being that soul worthy to enter into heaven.  You spend your entire life working on just that.

Part of scrubbing that soul clean also entails enjoying the little pieces of heaven you create during those moments.  Now that my path has become singular and defined, I know that I need to spend the rest of this lifetime loving every single moment, and loving all of the beauty that humanity can offer.  It’s not all destruction, terror and chaos.  It can be absolutely beautiful and worthy of love…just so long as that is what you’re looking for in life and you don’t get sucked into the hell surrounding us.

So the book is a definite go. I think I have all of the information sorted out in my head to finish the story.  The best way to figure out if you have a story to tell, share your story with your peers that are on that same journey in life.  If your story captures even the most unlikely person and they are leaning in to hear more…you know this is the story you need to tell.

Just like that story of my night in the Sahara Desert and watching everyone sigh (including the old man in the group), it shows that even the greatest of love stories can find their way into the hearts of men…and we know men usually aren’t big on love stories.

{Photo by Alberto Polo Ianez}

Summers are usually marked with two important factors: MOVIES and MUSIC.  At least, that’s how my summers were always marked.  There’s always a summer theme song and summer movies galore; concerts outdoors and Shakespeare in the park.  Summer memories are made of an ongoing soundtrack of fun, fun, fun.

There are companies aware of this and are ready to provide new services to the populace.  Here are two services that I am absolutely in love with right now.

MOVIES

How to capitalize on heading to the movies to stay cool and to see the major blockbusters without spending $14 on a ticket, plus an additional $15-$20 per person on refreshments?  The economy has kicked practically everybody where it hurts…in the wallet.  It’s highway robbery to take your family to the movies every week.

Well, I have good news for you.

Try MOVIE PASS.

I got my card last week and took it for a spin.  On Friday night, I stopped into a local Regal Cinema to see Hangover 3.  I checked in at the theater doors and then headed straight to the kiosk and got my ticket.  I tried to use my Regal Rewards Card, but I think the strip on my card isn’t working so I ended up stopping at the Customer Service Desk and they put the points on the card for me.

I grabbed my overly expensive snacks, sat down and enjoyed the movie.

The next day, I went to the movie theater across the street from me.  They’re just a rinky dink community center (i.e. not for profit).  I asked if they took Movie Pass because they were in the Movie Pass system.  The manager didn’t even know.  So I checked into Star Trek 2, it said “Purchase Your Ticket Now.”  I immediately handed the card to the manager, he swiped it and it was all good.  It worked just like a debit card and a minute later, I was sitting in the nearly empty theater watching the movie.

The fact that it worked at the community theater…that was a huge bonus for me, because it’s nice to just walk across the street, sit in an air conditioned movie theater during the hottest part of the day and enjoy the latest blockbuster.

Movie Pass is an annual membership.  The annual membership cost is $25 (charged once a year).  The monthly cost is  $30/month.  That means the monthly membership is paid off in 2 visits.  If you go to one movie a week…you win out.

Now, there are terms.  It’s one movie per day.  You can only watch the movie once using your Movie Pass.  If you’re one of those people that have to watch a movie more than one time in a movie theater, this is not for you.  If you can wait to see the movie again when it comes out on DVD 3-4 months later, then this is the right membership for you.

I also should add that you can use discount codes for your first month.  Just google “discount codes for Movie Pass” and try to use one that you find.  They generally work.  I got $15 off of my first month (which comes in handy because the $25 annual membership + first month membership are due at the start).

There are terms and conditions you should also be aware of: CLICK HERE.

Keep in mind, you need an iPhone or Android to use Movie Pass, along with a GPS locator initialized to check in at the theater.  You can only view 2D movies.  IMAX and 3D are off limits.

How to get around all of that?  Use your theater reward cards for every movie you watch.  You can still save up points towards 3D and IMAX movies or refreshments…your choice how you use your rewards.  Also, if you use GOFOBO or any kind of service that lets you screen movies for free…that’s also your free ticket to seeing those 3D and IMAX movies.  I usually get 1-2 invites a month and they’re usually for IMAX or 3D movies.

For me, I think Movie Pass is a great service.  It saves me a lot of money on the ‘entertainment budget.’  I try to get out and do something cultural on Thursdays so this is definitely economical for me considering I can use this at Lincoln Theater screenings and various artsy movie theaters.

I’ve read some of the reviews on Yelp.  Most talked about how it didn’t work so well for those not in major cities and worked amazingly in bigger cities (like NYC and Hollywood).  Although, everyone that I’ve asked that’s tried Movie Pass have all had positive reviews.  It worked fine in places near Nashville, Tennessee…so…if you’re using the App correctly, checking in using your GPS, then you’re set.

Also, if you’re not a member of all of the various reward programs that are offered at the bigger cinema companies, then get your application in.  Your rewards cards can be used along with your Movie Pass.  Movie Pass works just like a debit card at movie theaters.

Before signing up, make sure to look and see if the card is accepted at the movie theaters you frequent.

This is a by invitation only site, so here’s my invite for you: GET IT HERE.

MUSIC

I am obsessed with Google Play’s Unlimited Music.  Most Android users have Google Play on their phones.  Right now their deal is: first month is free, after that the membership is $7.99/month (+tax).

What do you get?  Access to all of their music.  You can store up to 20,000 songs in your music locker and access it at any time.

This has been a hallelujah, thank you Google Play moment for me.

I stopped into the library last week looking through their classical music files {I blame Hannibal for this}.  There were so many CDs.  I had no idea what I was looking for as a primer in classical music.  The music I had in my head…I had no idea who wrote it.

Well…I decided to try out Google Play’s Unlimited Music and within seconds, I had not only a primer in classical music downloaded onto my phone, but also hundreds upon hundreds of suggestions to build up my classical music library.  I even stumbled upon “The 100 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music.”  I was in heaven when I added it to my playlist.  Every piece of classical music I loved (but couldn’t name) was on this album.

The primers, essential music, suggestions and playlists helped me build a library of new music as well as rocking ongoing playlists for all the other genres.

I even got to dig up all of my favorites from Pearl Jam’s “Ten” to Default’s “The Fallout” and even Puddle of Mudd’s first album.  Oldies but goodies.

Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance”?  It’s in the library.

As much music as I downloaded since I joined the Unlimited Play…probably about $1000 worth if I had purchased all of the music.  $7.99/month and right now it’s free?  This is a musicophile’s wet dream come true.

Right now, I’m listening to Incubus “Morning View.”  This is probably one of the most amazing albums I’ve ever heard.  This new service allowed me to download everything in seconds.  I didn’t have to go through my own catalog to transfer the music files from my computer’s hard drives onto my Samsung Galaxy S3. Taking the pain out of all of that transferring…and making it cheap as hell…like I said…wet dream come true.

Another bonus…you can also listen to your entire music locker from your computer and various other devices.  While at the office, you can have all of your music on constant play from your computer.

Yes…I am very happy.

This is one service you will love.  Unlimited access to Google Play’s music. You can save 20,000 songs into your own personal music locker.  Or you can just listen and not add…your choice.  This is better than paying for every album and every song just to get it on your phone…and even though we may own the albums at home…we still buy it for our phone because we can’t go through the hassle of transferring it to our phones.  This service from Google Play takes all of that hassle away and doesn’t break your bank.

This is definitely worth your $7.99/month.

A few weeks ago, I was pondering how interesting it was that two people that were lovers in a past life could end up finding each other again.  I also had to kind of laugh to myself because of how close we are to each other in the physical sense and how that came about…you know, in the weird way the universe works.

I was walking out of my office building thinking about this and asking myself, “What are you going to do with all of this information you’re gathering?”  I mean, I’ve done a lot of research on this matter.

That’s when it occurred to me…you need to write THAT story.  Watching “Cloud Atlas” was the universe’s way of making me understand that this is that love story I’ve been writing for some time now…at least in my own mind.

Back in 2007, three months after my grandfather died, I took some time off from work to focus on myself and to grieve.  I had two hockey columns.  I left Orato.com after a change in editors and then fully embraced Inside Hockey.  I created my own blog for when I didn’t want to discuss hockey…or maybe I wanted to discuss what I couldn’t discuss at Inside Hockey.

At any rate, I’m getting off track here…

During my time off from work (I took 6 months off), I ended up starting the work on my first novel.  I had pieced a lot of stuff together…mostly the first part of the story.  I had been doing a lot of research into Hinduism because the topic matter seemed to be pointing towards the Indian culture (which eventually led me to the Meditation Center where I was taught about spirituality and it had a lot of Hindu influence on the knowledge I received).  I started reading Carl Jung’s work on the subject matter of ’synchronicity.’  He was a huge scientific part to understanding things that could not be explained.  He tried to explain the science of how the universe randomly makes fate happen.  He developed a theory he called ’synchronicity.’

Synchronicity is defined as “the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together in a meaningful manner.” (Wikipedia)

I’ve had a lot of synchronistic moments just trying to piece this story together.  As I finished the first part of the story in this book, it came to an abrupt halt.  I couldn’t write anymore.  I just didn’t know where the book needed to go after that.  I felt like I needed to experience a few more things in life and do more research before I could go back and finish the book.

Six years later…I now have the rest of the story…and this is the love story I’m always talking about.  It’s the accumulation of all of that research I’ve gathered intertwined with my own experiences…fictionalized, of course.  Once again, I still have to laugh to myself that the rest of the story was always there right in front of me and it didn’t click until I was walking through the lobby of my office building.

I thought of Amy Tan when I realized my ‘AHA!’ moment.  In her auto-biography, she wrote about the research she had done for one of her books.  She had one of those synchronistic moments where one thing led to another and then another and then another…until she realized that her insane need to research this subject matter was leading to a story she needed to tell.  She didn’t understand why she was researching this particular information until it dawned on her…it’s a story within her that needed to be told.

Perhaps it wasn’t someone else’s story she was telling.  Perhaps she was telling her own story from a different lifetime.

This first book I embarked upon years ago has been about one person in particular the entire time and I had no idea it was about him.

It’s strange how sitting in meditation for three hours straight can change the course of your entire path in life.  I made decisions in that meditation that would change the scope of the rest of my lifetime.  I detached from certain dreams I knew my heart wanted more than anything (the reasons why I retired).  I detached from things that I felt I needed and deserved in life and said to myself…if they were meant to be mine, I’d have those things already instead of a brick wall rising up in front of me every single time.

I gave up on a lot of dreams…that was when the real true path became a singular path and I had my breakthrough.  Hell, in case I wasn’t aware I had a breakthrough, I got a very synchronistic email a few hours later with my horoscope telling me I had made a breakthrough.  You kind of have to sigh with relief when you see that.

Sometimes it takes breaking your own heart and telling yourself that the dreams you want to live are just never going to happen…that is what will make you move onto the right stage and break free from your mistakes so that they will not repeat themselves again.

For the story I put down six years ago, I can finally pick it up again.  I told myself that if I ever did anything in life, it would be to write this one book.  There’s only one reason why I want to write it…it’s for that next lifetime…so I can remember what happened before.

If you’ve ever read “Cloud Atlas,” you’ll see that it’s the artistic pieces that survive from one lifetime to the next.  The story.  The music.  The books.  The video.  The moments that survive each lifetime wind up in your own hands in the next lifetime.  And the people…the ones that mean everything to you throughout the entire existence of your soul…you’ll always find each other again and again.  Whether it’s that incredible love or that person that caused you dire wrong or your best friend…you’ll find each other in every lifetime.

In all of my research over these last six years…that was the ultimate answer.  You will always find each other in every lifetime…and that is what the love story is all about.

I’ve had all of this information sitting in front of me for some time now and it didn’t make sense at all until I saw “Cloud Atlas” this weekend.  There was something about the movie that made me feel like I could taste the answer I was looking for…it was there at my fingertips…I just had to piece it all together.  I watched the movie five times straight.  I even started reading the book.  I was halfway through the book a good 24 hours later.

There was something about all of this that was the answer to my questions.  I just had to figure out what it all meant.

In the present, I recognize that there is a wall up.  An opportunity presents itself and then there’s a block.  It’s like you can see the person standing there on the other side of the glass, but no matter how hard you try, the glass won’t break.  What you’re looking for in life is on the other side of the glass.  You can see it as clear as day, but when you reach out to touch that dream…there’s that glass wall between you and the other person.  The universe is blocking you from that person.

The question is: WHY?

Why would the universe show you something made in heaven, but then put that glass wall up?  Is it to fuck with you?

In our day and age, many would say that maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.  But then if it wasn’t, why does the universe say differently…then when you reach out to touch it…you’re met with that wall?  I’ve seen it over and over and over again.

But wait…is that the only thing I see happening over and over again?  Where have I seen this story before?

During our lifetime, many of us will experience living a story over and over again in this lifetime.  It’s the same story, different people, different places, different scenarios…but the same story repeating itself over and over again.  People that have recognized this repetitive story in our lifetime have described it as the universe trying to make us relive something again and again because we did not learn from our lesson.  It was a life lesson that we did not learn from, so we are doomed to repeat it until we get it right.

So where does this story begin?  In 1999 and in several previous lifetimes.

Thanks to the power of meditation, I’ve been able to see glimpses into these past lives and how they relate to the answer I am seeking.  I’ll get to that part of the story later…

In 1999, I was living and working in Washington, DC.  I had just stepped on the elevator when the door was about to close when I heard a man running to catch the elevator.  The door was about to close when he caught it just in time and jumped onto the elevator.  I took one look at him from the other side of the box and thought to myself…this man is the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life.

We got off on the same floor.  Ends up…we worked on the same floor.

He was just so incredibly beautiful…the kind of guy that dates only supermodels, drives big, fancy cars, and has this incredible life…he was so out of my league.  Why would a guy like HIM be interested in ME?

There was a division of power there.  I had a lowly position right out of college, while he was one of the bosses.  We all know that in a workplace, bosses don’t fraternize with the staff, especially when there is a lot of power and politics in place.

Three months after I noticed this beautiful man, I was standing at the elevator bank, waiting for the elevator when he came up to me and said, “That’s a beautiful dress you’re wearing.”  I looked down and almost had to laugh.  I had on a blue maxi dress that even my brother calls a mumu dress.  I actually looked at him weird and said, “Thanks?”

I thought he was making fun of me, like you’d expect some hot looking guy to do to someone who is wearing a mumu dress.  He took a step back and realized that I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or not when he countered with, “I mean, it really is a beautiful dress.  I like the blues and the colors in it.”

I smiled and realized he was being nice, so I commented on how I liked his glasses.  He always wore these unique looking rims that he picked up in Germany.  {See…out of my league here…he gets his frames from Germany!}

And then that’s when the flirting began.

We fell in love with each other.  Everyone at the office knew.  I mean…EVERYONE KNEW.

The issue always was…you’re in love with someone who is basically forbidden from you, so how do you make it work?

After 8 months of this struggle to try to be together, I thought I’d make our lives easier, so I transferred with my bosses to our Northern Virginia office.  That way, people wouldn’t see or talk about us.  But don’t think my bosses didn’t know about it.  Mr. Beautiful tried to get involved in as many projects as my boss, so it would give him an excuse to come out to our NoVA office.  My bosses knew why he was doing it.

My boss finally called me into his office and told me that Mr. Beautiful had asked to be transferred to the NoVA office.  He told their superiors, “NO.”  He knew why he wanted the transfer.  Mr. Beautiful asked to be transferred to my boss’s group…another “NO.”  My boss told them why…he was trying to be closer to me.

This came about after a party I hosted for our German clients.  I was standing on the other side of the room, talking to one of our German associates.  The head of our office came up to me (an older gentleman that taught me a lot about life and how to live the best life possible) and he kissed me right on the lips.  I took it to be that he drank one too many cocktails, so I let it slide.

I looked across the room and saw Mr. Beautiful talking to a few of our clients.  He had looked at me at the exact same time and he did something that every girl in the friggin universe dreams the man they’re crushing on will do to them…walk across the room, grab them, whisper sweet nothings into their ear and kiss them.

Yeah…so he saw what the head of our office did.  And then he saw me look at him.  I heard him excuse himself from the group of clients and said there was something very important he needed to do.  He walked right across the room, walked straight up to me and said, “I’ve always dreamed that someone would look at me the way you just looked at me.”

And then he grabbed me and kissed me.

In front of our clients, the heads of our offices, our bosses…he kissed me.

That’s why my boss put a firm “NO” on all of his requests to be transferred to our office in NoVA.  When he was up for promotion, they denied his promotion saying that I was the reason why.

The world got really dark for us.  Everywhere we turned, we were forbidden from trying to break through that glass that separated us.  It got to be so hard fighting to be together despite how we felt that I just gave up.  I began to think that maybe we were just not meant to be together.

I started to focus on my life and what I wanted out of it.  I needed to find myself in all of this mess.  The answer was to leave DC and move to LA.

That last week before I moved, he stayed in the NoVA office the entire week.  He came up with some lame excuse that he had to meet a client there.  He called me into his office at one point and had me shut the door behind me.  He asked me through all of my ramblings (of what I was doing with my life) if I ever for once thought how he might feel about all of this.  I wasn’t just leaving the job or the city…I was leaving him behind.

I honestly told him, “No.”  I hadn’t thought about him once through this decision-making process.  I needed to find myself.

That was the moment I broke his heart.

I was leaving because it had become too hard for us to be together.  That’s why I was leaving.  He knew it…I just couldn’t say it.

I left DC.  I didn’t even make it to LA.  I wound up back home for a few years before heading to NYC.  Karma hit me hard back at home.

The same story played out again and a rockstar broke my heart just as badly as I broke Mr. Beautiful’s heart.

I left (yet again) and went to NYC to heal.

As I was sending out Christmas cards, I sent one to an old boss who was living in Pennsylvania.  She sent me a Christmas card back enclosing Mr. Beautiful’s business card with a note saying, “I thought you might like to know where he is now.  Maybe you can try again.”

She didn’t know what happened to him beyond the fact that he left the firm after I left.  He took a job at a very important bank immediately after I left.  He had found a way for us to be together.  He left the job so we could start anew…if I were to come back.

Thinking this was a sign, I sent him a Christmas card to let him know I was back on the same coast, living in NYC.  I took a chance, hoping that maybe we could fix this.

He had been out of town when the card arrived in his office.  He emailed me and told me what happened after I had left.  He told me he had waited three months for me to come back and I didn’t…so he moved on.  He got married to someone…a baby was on the way.

And yes…I did cry.

Like everyone does at some point in their lives when they become curious over ‘whatever happened to so and so…’ I looked him up one day a few years after he sent me that email.  Lucky me, he had a Facebook page that wasn’t private, so I took a look at his life after me.

I saw pictures of his children and his wife.  I saw first birthdays and first bicycle rides with Daddy.

Then I saw the pictures of him traveling all over the world…alone.  In that brief glimpse of those photos, I saw myself standing next to him.  It was like watching an image of yourself being erased away from memory…like you never existed.  I could see myself standing next to him in those photos around the world…and then I could see that image fading away because it did not happen.

He was the love story that went wrong.  It’s the story that has been on repeat in this lifetime…and karma has kicked me in the ass over it too.  You see, people always think that karma kicks you when you’ve done something bad and helps you when you’ve done something good.  Karma also exists on a much higher level.  It’s what lies within your soul.

When you break someone’s heart…someone you love (and you’ll always love for the rest of your life)…it hurts them.  You have caused someone pain.  You may even feel that same pain in your heart that you have to let them go, but keep in mind…karma sees that pain and will smack you in the exact same way 10x worse than what you did to that person…even if you never meant to hurt them.

Karma nearly killed me with my broken heart after Mr. Beautiful.  The story played out almost identical to that first story.

I’m currently on Round Three of this same story.  Different people, different elements, that same glass wall.

The one thing I learned in all of this was that when I feel defeated and give up the fight, I never realize that I should just keep hanging on because I’ve already won the fight.  I usually just walk away from it all and say forget it…it wasn’t meant to be.  I never realize that it was meant to be.  When you’re fighting so hard for something, what determines if you are worthy of that prize is if you never give up.  Every now and again you can look up and see that you always had the prize, you just had to stop fighting the world to see it was yours all along.

It took over a decade to figure that out.

As for past lives, I’ve already come across the man that was my husband in several lifetimes.  He was an element that was interjected in Round Three.  When I first started meditating, he kept cropping up in my meditations.  It took leaving the Meditation Center for five years and then going back to understand why he kept appearing in my meditations…when I saw the glimpses of my past.

We had unfinished business leftover from the last lifetime.

When Round Three started and an element from a past life surfaced, it put forward the motions of how Round Three would turn out.  I remember sitting there, seeing him (Round Three) look at me and then realize I wasn’t looking at him.  He turned his head to see who I was looking at, he looked back at me, and then back at him.

When I realized he had noticed, I looked at him and he looked at me like I had wounded him.  He came right up to me in anger and then he turned and walked away.  He didn’t just walk away…he left.

In that time he was away, that past life element…it worked it’s way out in its own way.  I began to understand who he was and why we had these intense feelings when we were in the same room together (everyone could feel it).  We knew each other and we knew each other well…but not from this lifetime.  These are feelings of emotions and memories of many lifetimes past of two people that loved each other dearly.  Even though this lifetime is different (he has his own family), the love is still there.  It doesn’t disappear in rebirths.  It remains.

In some strange universal being of love…we find each other in every lifetime.  Fate and destiny pulled us into the same room again, but the element of ‘being together’ was not a possibility in this lifetime.

None of this stuff clicked until I found him outside of my office one day.  It was like he was waiting for me.  I don’t know if he was or not, but he was just standing there pretending like he didn’t see me and just by chance happened to be in that spot when I came out of work (he shouldn’t pursue acting at any point in this lifetime).  He ended up walking me down to the end of the block.  We were catching up where we left off…the weird part was I felt like we were picking up where we left off in the last lifetime, not the present lifetime.

It was like we were updating each other on what had transpired since we saw each other last…as in…the last lifetime!  When I realized that, I took one look at him and realized where this was going and said goodbye to him right then and there and left him standing there on the corner in Times Square.

He was my husband from many lifetimes before…just not this one.

One of the sisters at the Center mentioned this a few weeks ago.  She must have plucked this from my mind, because she decided to talk about it without telling the class who she was referencing.

I did the right thing by walking away before it led to compromising my own morals.  People who lack morality would start an affair, because these emotions run rampant.  You feel strongly about this person, because they were your past love in previous lifetimes.  You feel this strong inexplicable chemistry and don’t know why.  It’s because you were lovers in the last lifetime.

The reason why this is happening now?  Usually the other person is married and has a family…the other person is single.  It’s happening again because we have unfinished business leftover from the previous lifetime.

In these circumstances, it’s best to let the other person go.  Wish them love and happiness and let them go.  That’s all you can do without disrupting the karmic balance.  You have to clean the bad elements out of your soul…not add to it.

It’s interesting that no matter how many rebirths you take, the love continues on into the next lifetime.  You don’t even know why you have this intense feeling of love for someone you’ve never met, but when you’re in the same room together, it’s like something magical happens.  That was what happened to us and it almost destroyed what I felt for someone else when he saw the way we looked at each other that night.

I’m just lucky he came back.  In that time he was away, I was able to figure out what the deal was with this other guy and handle the situation.  BUT there’s still that karmic payback for breaking Mr. Beautiful’s heart…and then there’s the whole…learning how to change this story so that it works out the way it’s supposed to.

There are many times I’ve given up the fight.  I’ve walked away and said…I’m crazy for thinking this guy even likes me.  Then something happens and I realize…maybe he does like me.  Maybe there is something there.  Then I go back to the whole…giving up and walking away.

I’ve made a lot of risks.  I’ve taken chances and received nothing in return but that glass wall.  I’ve kept the fight up no matter how many times that glass wall called the universe has knocked me down.  Perhaps I should stop trying to climb the wall and look for the door, right?

I had this dream last week about Mr. Beautiful and realized that the answer I’m looking for all lies with him.  I realized that it’s better not to live life with regrets, but to learn from your mistakes.  He was the key to understanding this grand scheme of fate, destiny and love.  I always say that my biggest regret was leaving him.  Apparently, I never learned from my mistake.

When God told me to go back to the beginning of this story…apparently he was talking about Round Three.  I apparently missed something the first time around.  Now, I’m learning about the mistakes I made.  Now I need to figure out how to fix the mistakes and set the universe right so I can stop repeating this story and move forward.

I’ve already started to see a crack in the glass (that crack of self-realization)…but you have to become stronger (and wiser) in order to fully shatter the glass and that comes from truly realizing that you should never make that stupid mistake again, because it will seriously cost you…and a lot of pain follows.

I just want to see the happy ending after all.  I’ve already seen Grimm’s version one too many times already.  Maybe third time is the charm.

So taking that thought process of emptying my cup into my home, I’m starting to look at it as a way to empty the clutter in my home.

I’ve upgraded a lot of things this year throughout my apartment.  I mean…a lot of things.  I’ve been tackling one section of clutter after another as the old was replaced by the new.  Now, I’m tackling the ‘stuff’.  You know…that stuff you hide behind doors and in drawers.  Stuff that starts to overflow because you seem to have gone overboard with the abundance of ____ and you never get rid of it.

My first item on the list to tackle has been getting rid of non-classic books I’ve read.  This is easier said then done.

Last week, I dropped off a bag of books and a few DVDs I didn’t like.  For 16 items, I netted about $19.50 from Book Off in NYC.  I didn’t think I’d get that much for the stuff in the bag.  I thought I’d get $5 or something.  Most of the stuff I got for next to nothing at my library’s book sale during one of their $1 fill up 2 bags with whatever you want nights.

While I was at Book Off, I saw a sign that said for every 30 DVDs, we’ll give you an extra $10 (through 5/31).  I thought…well, I am kind of bogged down with DVDs, why not start sorting through them?

Well, I made it a task of only keeping 125 DVDs.  The amount I kept of kids DVDs didn’t count.  By the time I finished, I had 2 huge bags filled with books and DVDs.  All of the DVDs I kept now fit into one cabinet.

The most important thing in this decluttering was how I felt after I packed up those 2 bags to take in to Book Off.  I felt less cluttered.  I really felt like I had accomplished something HUGE.  It was almost like feeling FREE.

In money terms, this would be considered the debt-snowball method.  [Start off by paying off the smallest credit card balance, while paying the minimum on the others each month, repeating the cycle until you've paid all of the cards off.]  The reason why the debt snowball works is because you’ve started off small, seen yourself accomplish that one small task, you feel good about it, and then you’re inspired to keep going and you want to tackle more!

That’s the same with decluttering your home.  Decluttering your debts, you feel a sense of relief when it’s absolutely GONE.  You want to keep going and going to remain free of what was cluttering up your money.  It’s the same with decluttering in any aspect of your life.  Start small and work your way up.

So what did I net from the 2 bags of books/DVDs I dropped off at Book Off?  $119.80.  That’s what someone paid for my clutter…in cash…with no listing, shipping or extra work on my part.

I walked away with 5 books for $4.26 (like I couldn’t shop while I was in there)…and still came out ahead.  I wasn’t expecting much from the 2 bags of junk, but I’m glad I netted higher than my expectations and I cleared some space in my living room.

You don’t realize just how much you feel cluttered with stuff until you detach from it and let it go.  You start to empty your own cup to fill the home up with what really matters…peace and harmony in the home.  No stress.

Now that the first step is out of the way, I’ll be tackling the CDRs with their jewel cases and unused, unwanted electronics next.  Where can I go to drop these items off?  Best Buy

What’s nice about Best Buy’s recycling program is that they don’t just recycle those items, you can also do trade-ins good for a Best Buy gift card.  For ink cartridges, toners and batteries, you can just drop them in one of the recycling kiosks right inside their door.

There are many electronic recycling sites that will pay you for your trade-ins.  I once sent my dead Blackberry Bold in to be recycled (seriously…it was dead).  All I expected to get out of it were points towards goodies at Recyclebank.com

I ended up with a lot of points…and then a surprise $62 check for my dead Blackberry Bold.  Not bad, considering I wasn’t expecting money out of it.

Speaking of Recyclebank.com, you can earn points towards free stuff like magazine subscriptions, gift cards, coupons and discounts by learning how to recycle and go green.  Last week, I took half an hour out of my day to read up on the latest, take a few quizzes on what I know, and ended up getting two free magazine subscriptions from all the points I racked up in that half an hour.  I was able to renew my Marie Claire and Country Living subscriptions…for FREE.

The site is free to use and is great for the wealth of knowledge you gain on recycling and making your carbon footprint just a tad bit smaller.

Now, I’m going to share a little secret for the fashionistas…I’ve stumbled upon a fab consignment store based in LA called FashionPhile.

I got a $1500 Hermes agenda cover for $125.  Not bad, right?

What’s also nice is that I was able to put a Prada bag on layaway for my birthday.  All I had to do was put 1/4 of the price down for the bag…and I can pay whatever over the next 60 days (just in time for my birthday) until the bag is completely paid for.

BUT…I also figured out how I could get the bag for free…

I’ve been contemplating getting rid of a Burberry bag I never use, a few Valentino and Prada sunglasses, a Fendi bag and a few other luxury items.  Why not sell them with FashionPhile?  They will, at times, buy the items outright from you if you don’t want to wait for the bag to sell through consignment.

So it’s almost like I’m trading in those items to get the bag I want now, plus have some extra cash to boot.

If you have luxury items, designer items, wedding dresses, evening wear, etc. that you need to clear out, try consignment shops.  I’ve been obsessed with FashionPhile and FlipUrCloset lately because I’ve found such incredible deals.  I bought a pair of amazing Prada shoes from FlipUrCloset for only $75 and a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes for $125.  Gotta say…the Prada shoes were a serious deal.  They were beyond perfect.

These options I listed above will help you get rid of your clutter and junk.  It will save you from that horrible and tedious waste of time called yard sales.  If you have furniture that needs to be booted out of your home, try Craigslist.

For everything else you can’t sell or you can’t be bothered with to do a yard sale for your junk…just donate it to a local charity.  Even some of that stuff can be put in a box and sent to various charities assisting in disaster relief.

For baby clothes, there are various sites where you can swap baby clothes.  It’s cheaper than going out and buying new clothes all of the time as your baby grows.  It’s one part recycling what you can’t use anymore and part trading for clothes your baby needs.

If you want to be more social, you can even host your own clothes swap, book swaps, DVD swaps, etc. with friends.  Just host a party that allows you and your friends to swap the items they don’t want anymore.  Unclaimed stuff…donate it to charity.

I’ve gone to a clothes swap before.  All you do is bring what you don’t want…it all gets dumped in the middle of the floor…first come, first serve.  Just make sure you invite people who are the same size as you (if doing a clothes swap).

I hope this helps those of you that are spring cleaning and wanting to declutter.  Keep in mind, don’t go into these places like you want to make a huge buck.  Go in thinking of the stuff as complete junk.  If they don’t take it…it’s going into the trash or it’s going to be donated.  If you go in thinking that way, you’ll be surprised at what they give to you.

Don’t look at the stuff as “I paid X amount for it.”  Look at it as, “This is complete crap and I’m going to throw it all away unless you’re interested in buying it off of me.”  That’s how you approach clutter…it’s junk.  It has NO VALUE to you anymore.  If someone wants to give you money for your junk, take it.

What can’t be sold, traded, or given away, donate it if you can.  If all else fails in those departments, make sure you recycle what you have in the best way possible.  Even your worn down tennis shoes can be reused and recycled to make athletic tracks.  All you have to do is Google to find out where and how you can get the best use out of your junk.

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THE FINE PRINT:

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Being in NYC, one of the fashion capitals of the world, I’ve met a lot of designers, fashion editors, business owners, fashion writers, fashionistas, models, etc. that it was inevitable that I start to move in that direction.  The door was open to me…I just had to walk through it.  BUT you can’t walk through that door without a product in hand.

Over these last few years, I’ve amassed over 1000+ published articles and over 10,000 photos.  Now it’s time to create a product that can be sold to the populace.  This is what I wanted to do in my retirement, but I didn’t know how to put it all together.  Now, I know how, because I know what I want to do.

It took a couple of months of meditation to focus on how I was going to bring this all together and create something that reflected some of my other passions in life beyond this amazing journey I’ve been on.  Now, I have a plan.

I’m creating a site that talks about fashion, food, home, travel, books and the arts.  You’ll also be able to shop my closet and looks, as well as buy my photos and artwork.

You’ll get to learn a lot of the tricks I have up my sleeve on how to create your own fantasy wardrobe filled with the many couture designer brands you’ve been lusting after…without spending a fortune on it.  I’ll even teach you a few tricks on how you can actually build up your closet without spending a penny.

I’ll even bring you into my kitchen and show you what I’ve been cooking up.

There will be posts on how I’ve been decorating at home, as well as DIY projects, and new ways to organize your home.

I’ll share a lot of my travels in the shortened, non-blog way (i.e. I won’t write a novel like I do here on this site).

I’ll also be sharing what I’m reading, the shows I’ve attended, and other artsy stuff around NYC and elsewhere.

I’ll even have some inspirational stuff up to get you through the day…once again…it’s the shortened version.  We’ll leave the extremely long posts for this blog.

Hockey will remain off of this site (I say that now, but who knows, I may need to rant some day).  You’ll be able to find that subject matter at Inside Hockey and The Pink Puck.  Oh, and in case you missed it, I unretired myself from hockey, so I’m back in the press box for both the Devils and the Rangers.  The Devils will be full-time, the Rangers will remain part-time next season.

I’ll announce when I launch the new site.  My target date is my birthday (July 1).

Anticipate more colorful photos…less editorial…and ideas that will inspire you to look at the world the way I see it…Beautiful.  And if your world is not beautiful, maybe this will inspire you to find beauty in your own life.

If it looks like this blog is slacking a little over these next couple of months…you’ll understand why.

I battled all day trying to decide if I should go or not.  As I was walking through Times Square after 7PM last night, I looked over at the TKTS booth and saw there was no line.  Instead of heading home, I headed straight to the booth.  There was NO ONE in line.  Most shows start at 7PM or 7:30PM, so I lucked out and bought a ticket for the 8PM showing of Jekyll & Hyde.

I walked in knowing that the show had been re-written…a new adaptation…whatever you want to call it.  I knew I was not supposed to compare this show to the previous show…the original adaptation that became the musical of my soul.

Years ago when I first saw the show, it was Lucy I connected to right from the start.  I hardly even remember what Jekyll or Hyde did.  I remembered Lucy.

Lucy was me all those years ago.  The songs she sang, “Someone Like You” and “No One Knows Who I Am,” were the songs that defined who I was…someone searching for meaning in their life.  Someone searching for love, hope, dreams…a new life.

I connected to Lucy.  Through that connection I was able to connect to the show “Jekyll & Hyde.”

From the battles between “Good ’N’ Evil”…the main theme of this entire work…I was able to see my own battles I had with breaking away from what I knew to be true within me…and what my Christian family told me I was supposed to believe.  It was as if this was the playground to my search in understanding who was Good and who was Evil.

This musical was the story of my inner being during my 20s.

And now…

I understand why it didn’t last the entire 13 weeks on Broadway.

This has nothing to do with the actors.  Deborah Cox (Lucy) and Constantine Maroulis (Jekyll/Hyde) were phenomenal as well as the rest of the cast.  What was not amazing was the rewrite.

I could not connect to this show.  The only time I felt a connection was when Hyde broke out of Jekyll.  But that connection had nothing to do with the show itself.  That connection was with Mr. Maroulis himself.  I always like to say that Constantine is that dream I had for myself.  He’s doing everything in life I always dreamed of doing (including starring in Jekyll & Hyde…and yes, that was on my bucket list in my 20s).  He is like that dream I never pursued.  It was the dream I said goodbye to a long time ago.  These are the dreams I had for myself…dreams I walked away from years before Constantine Maroulis ever set foot on American Idol.  Yet, as I watch him in his career I always see a flicker of myself up there on that stage.  If I had done this life differently…that’s what I would have done.  But I made different choices in life.

The first thing I noticed as I flipped through the Playbill was that the most instrumental song that connects Lucy to Jekyll & Hyde (“Good ’N’ Evil”) was taken out and replaced with “Bring on the Men.”  This is where Frank Wildhorn erred.  He never should have taken that song out of the show.

By replacing the song with “Bring on the Men,” I sat there going…I don’t understand how Lucy developed a connection with Dr. Jekyll and then Mr. Hyde.  It couldn’t have been in her little talk with Dr. Jekyll after her show.  Nothing she said was enough for Dr. Jekyll to have an “AHA!” moment and decide that he would become the test subject.  I didn’t connect the dots there.

If it had been “Good ‘N’ Evil” being sung on that stage…it would have made sense.  The battle between Good & Evil is what this show is all about.  Dr. Jekyll’s connection to what he was trying to do in the lab, hearing this woman sing about “Good ‘N’ Evil” would have made him feel a synchronistic moment…a moment he would have pursued further.

Why?  Because that’s what happens in real life when you’re grappling with something inside of you and then all of a sudden the universe produces a sign.  You want to get close to that person that presented the sign because in some crazy universe’s way of understanding…you are connected to this person in your journey and you need to understand why.

That’s why “Good ‘N’ Evil” was so important to this show.  It’s what seals Lucy’s fate to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  That song is what gives Dr. Jekyll his “AHA!” moment.  I fail to understand how “Bring on the Men” makes Dr. Jekyll all of a sudden decide, “Oh, I’m going to make myself the test subject.”

Which brings us to “This is the Moment.”  No connection.  Mr. Wildhorn set that song up for failure because I was still back in the previous scene thinking, “I don’t understand where Dr. Jekyll got his AHA! moment.”  Why is this all of a sudden his moment?  I fail to see how the dots connected to THE MOMENT.

This whole story is about the struggle between Good & Evil.  The theme is repeated throughout the entire show.  Mr. Wildhorn seriously erred when he replaced “Good ‘N’ Evil” with “Bring on the Men.”

Now, the changes I did love to the show…the new digital media.  That part of the show (as compared to the old school ways of the original show) really enhanced the show.  You could really get a feel for how amazing this feature was during Dr. Jekyll’s battle with Hyde at the end.  I kept imagining…if this feature was available way back when…I probably would have been even more mesmerized with the show than I already was.  It would have been sensory overload…but in a good way.

If only Wildhorn didn’t mess up the first part of this show.

Now…let’s talk about the actors.

Deborah Cox.  What a beautiful, extremely talented woman.  Every time she started singing, I got goosebumps.  I love the outfits all of the women were wearing, including all of Lucy’s lingerie.  Ms. Cox…that lady has some serious stems on her.  I kept thinking, ‘I wonder how many hours she spends in the gym to get her gams looking that amazing.’

I remember her debut album.  I owned it.  To see how she’s grown as a chantress since that debut…this is professionalism at its best.  The lady can sing…like…you can’t help but want to throw red roses up on the stage every time she finishes her song.

Teal Wicks…she’s far better than any other Emma I have ever seen.  This lady…she can sing.  She reminded me of something Wicked.  Why…that’s because the last time I saw her…she was playing Elphaba in Wicked.  So trust me when I say…she can sing.  I have to say that this Emma was the way Emma should have been all along.  She made the actual songs sound better, especially in the duet with Lucy, “In His Eyes.”

There’s more passion and heart in her voice than the previous Emmas.

Constantine Maroulis.  There was a lot of talk about “This is the Moment” being changed.  This is the song that is supposed to connect the audience to the lead character.  But thanks to a bad rewrite during the first act…NO CONNECTION.  But…

He made us connect to him through “Transformation” … when he becomes Hyde.  I honestly sat there and said, “Oh, there’s Constantine bursting out of this lame Dr. Jekyll.”

I didn’t understand how he was portraying Dr. Jekyll until midway through the second act.  Throughout most of the first act I kept thinking…what is he doing with this character?  Is he nervous?  I don’t understand.

It was when he had the struggle between maintaining Dr. Jekyll or becoming Mr. Hyde that I understood what he was trying to do with Dr. Jekyll…and then I thought…BRILLIANT.

Trust me ladies, Dr. Jekyll is the good guy…the guy girls look past.  They don’t want to date these nerdy types.  Mr. Hyde though…oh, I did this, “Hellllooooo, NURSE!” when he bursted out of Jekyll.  I mean…he literally bursted out of Jekyll.  Probably the best damn acting I have ever seen in my life.

I’ve never seen another character burst out of another character like that before.  It was phenomenal.  He didn’t do this just once.  He did it several times and I was amazed every single time he did it.

And this is where you hand him the award for Best Actor on Broadway.  The whole Hyde bursting out of Dr. Jekyll…that’s what makes you connect to the show.  What happened before that moment…you forget nothing made sense.  Hyde is what made sense from there on out.  Prior to that…Mr. Wildhorn needs to go back and make the story right.

I mean…how do you sabotage the most important moments in the show?  HOW?

Thank the Jekyll that Hyde bursted out to save the show.

All in all, would I recommend the show?  Yes…to see the amazing acting.  No…because Frank Wildhorn messed up in the rewrite.  In other words…the show was worth about 50% of my ticket.  That mess up with taking out “Good ‘N’ Evil” doomed this show on Broadway.  It suffered the Wildhorn curse yet again.

Here’s what Wikipedia wrote about the original scene:

Nellie, the German manageress of “The Red Rat”, then breaks Lucy’s reverie and then sends her out onstage to do her number (“Good ‘N’ Evil”**), which captivates Jekyll. After the number, Lucy begins to circulate among the clientele. Spider approaches Lucy and after striking her hard across the face, threatens to kill her if she is late again. Jekyll approaches Lucy after witnessing the Spider’s actions and intends to help her as Utterson is led away by another bar girl. Jekyll and Lucy are drawn to each other in a way that promises each of them a great friendship. Jekyll admits Lucy’s song has helped him find the answer to his experiment.

That scene was completely changed.  The connection was lost.

Grrr….

Proof this show was doomed…there were plenty of seats available.

You have through Sunday to catch this show at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway before it’s officially over.

Mr. Wildhorn made me really sad that he sabotaged one of the greatest things he has ever created.  Put the song back, Mr. Wildhorn. For the love of Jekyll & Hyde…I beg you.  Do the scene exactly as it is now…with “Good ‘N’ Evil” instead.  Deborah Cox would’ve rocked that.